Been a shitty few days. Wife took a sudden turn for the worst, lost something like 3 kilograms in two days, throwing up non-stop, back in the hospital. Brutal, brutal times. She threw up so many times today in the hospital that her throat is raw and she can’t eat solids.

Good news: Doctor says baby is fine, healthy. And as of tonight, Mrs. Bashcraft is doing much better. When she was pregnant with Mini-Bash, it was like this until her 14th week. So we’ve got a few more weeks of morning sickness from hell before she’ll return to normal.

Played soccer with Mini Bash today for about an hour. Seemed to cheer him up.

We knew it was going to be like this (was like this last time), but still, words cannot describe how stressful these past few days have been. Leaving the hospital today, Mrs. Bashcraft said this: “I’m sorry.”

We haven’t heard squat from Ubisoft on the next Raving Rabbids game. No announcement, no screens, no carefully-worded press release, nothing. Just this video. But after watching it, is it safe to assume that Ubisoft know which of Nintendo’s cash-making coattails to grab next, and will be making the next Rabbids game at least partially compatible with the Wii Fit Board? You know the answer.

Forget for a moment this is still “unconfirmed”, but according to magazine EGM, Capcom’s Street Fighter IV isn’t being developed by Capcom — but outsourced to another Osaka developer. That’s right, apparently DIMPS is working on the game. DIMPS was founded by former SNK devs and is best known for its excellent Rumble Fish fighters along with churning out run-of-the-mill Dragon Ball Z games. Another DIMPS fun fact: That FPS Gundam game they developed for the Xbox 360 wasn’t really being developed by them, but apparently outsourced to a Korean dev who’s did a shitty job on it. Anyway! Also, forget for a moment that Capcom USA has been saying that Street Fighter IV is being developed internally. One more thing, forget for a moment that we’ve been going on about DIMPS doing SFIV since, well, last year. Personally, I don’t care if Capcom or DIMPS does the game — just don’t make it sucky, m’kay? Capcom Lied Again [NeoGAF]

Activision released the tracklist for its DS title Guitar Hero: On Tour. It’s 15 songs, though it was announced previously that there would be 25 songs. Unlockables? Downloadable? Dunno knowable! Hit the jump for the full tracklist:

Between 2004 and 2007, Nintendo were selling some small, character-adorned pins at both their Redmond HQ and Nintendo World Store. Little metal Nintendo characters, little sharp pin, you stick them on your jacket/bag/hat. Standard stuff. Oh, except for the fact they contain unsafe levels of lead. Before you plan a trip to your doctor’s/lawyer’s office, however, note that they’re only dangerous if you swallow them, not wear them, so unless you’ve been snacking on lapel pins between Smash Bros rounds, you’ll probably live to see the morning. If you are snacking on them, though, and would like pins less likely to cause serious health issues, Nintendo are recalling them and offering free replacements. Details below. Character Lapel Pin Recall [Nintendo, via GameSpot]

After parting with $US15,000, James Baker became the proud owner of one of 26 gold-coloured NES cartridges made especially for the 1990 Nintendo World Championships. Remember, it’s not a gold NES cart, it’s a gold-coloured NES cart. Says James:
I’ve avoided collecting carts for a while — I always looked at them as a slippery slope, since there are just so many collectible carts out there to get. When I started, I concentrated on systems — I’m up to 130 now.

A slippery slope? No James. More like a fucking expensive slope. Big Collection [Next Generation]

When first trotting out the PS3 for a public look-see in 05/06, two “games” Sony showed off were Eight Days and Getaway 3. Hope you weren’t expecting them any time soon (or honestly believed what you saw was real in any way), because The Guardian have been told by Sony London that Eight Days has only just entered full production, and that Getaway 3 is in pre-production, and will only kick it up a notch when Eight Days is finished. Seeing how well-received the first two Getaway games were, I don’t know how they hope to keep our expectations in check for that long. Inside Sony’s secret powerhouse [The Guardian]

Shenmue, that was a pricey game! For the past 18 years or so, Yu Suzuki’s Shenmue has been the most expensive game ever developed at $US70 million, making the game the current Guinnes World Record holder. According to Rockstar producer Leslie Benzies, Grand Theft Auto IV just might supplant Shenmue. Over a thousand people worked on the game, and Benzies guestimates GTA IV cost roughly $100 million. Just imagine if Tom Cruise had done voice acting work! So, any takers on what Metal Gear Solid 4 cost? I’m betting slightly north of $120 million. Grand Theft Auto Producer [Times Online via NeoGAF via Sega Nerds]

Sure, it had a rocky start to life, but Valve’s Steam platform is probably the best thing PC gaming has going for it right now, and has given the company far more clout in the industry than it could muster from its games alone. But how different could things have been if Valve had looked to somebody else to build the system? Somebody like…Microsoft? Or maybe even Yahoo? Valve’s Doug Lombardi tells GamesIndustry:
You know, we went around to Yahoo, Microsoft…and anybody who seemed like a likely candidate to build something like Steam.

We basically had our feature list that we wanted. We wanted auto-updating, we wanted better anti-piracy, better anti-cheat, and selling the games over the wire was something we came up with later.

We went around to everybody and asked ‘Are you guys doing anything like this?’ And everyone was like ‘That’s a million miles in the future…We can’t help you. Can you imagine a Steam built by Yahoo? And how goddamned brilliant it would be? And intuitive? Boggles the mind. Microsoft and Yahoo rejected Steam, says Valve [Gamesindustry.biz]

So Peter Moore has long since taken the reigns over at EA Sports. He’s a regular and has blended in like the carpet. But when he left Microsoft last year, did he have any reservations about going over to EA Sports. Yes, yes he did. According to Moore: